At 42, the pianist and composer Danilo Pérez is everywhere. For starters, he’s key to two of the best working bands in jazz right now, and two of the busiest: the Wayne Shorter Quartet and his own trio with bassist Ben Street and drummer Adam Cruz. (The latter perform this weekend at the Regattabar.) Besides that, he’s teaching at both Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory. Since 2003, he’s run the Panama Jazz Festival, which is the keystone for his educational foundation and outreach programs in his home country. And this year he’s added two major works to his discography. In January came Panama Suite (ArtistShare), a recording of his own composition, and then on August 26 Across the Crystal Sea (Emarcy/Decca), a collaboration with the venerable composer/arranger Claus Ogerman.

Together these projects show the breadth of Pérez’s talent. Classically trained at the National Conservatory in Panama, he came to Berklee in 1985 to study jazz composition. His skill at combining the bebop vocabulary with his pan-American heritage was honed as a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s United Nation Orchestra, and a series of solo albums — especially 1996’s PanaMonk and 2000’s Motherland — showed him developing his own voice. But it wasn’t until he began playing with Shorter (on the 2003 Verve album Alegría) that his work leapt into a whole new dimension. When Shorter formed his new quartet, he pushed Pérez farther and farther out of his comfort zone. Pérez has always maintained that he wanted to play music “without an immigration officer”; Shorter, basing his new band’s music on a combination of his own compositions and free improvisation, stamped Pérez’s permanent visa. The Shorter Quartet’s live performances have become some of the most exciting on the scene right now because of their unpredictability and because the group (with bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade) have taken the jazz ethos of combining form and intuition to remarkable heights. It’s a practice that Pérez has continued in his own trio.

Of the new discs, Pérez told me when we got together at New England Conservatory during a break in his touring schedule with Shorter this past July, Panama Suite is his attempt “to translate the folkloric sound of Panama to the big-band setting but with the harmonies and adventure of jazz improvisation.” The three-movement, 25-minute work roils with catchy, riff-like tunes and propulsive Afro-Latin rhythms. Across the Crystal Sea, on the other hand, was conceived as an Ogerman project with producer Tommy LiPuma, and it wasn’t till the recording was completed that Ogerman decided Pérez should get top billing. “It’s all about him!” says Pérez affectionately of Ogerman. “I was just an actor in his movie.”

Ten live jazz gigs to catch in early 2011 Next week we'll tell you all about the tenor saxophonist Charles Lloyd, who brings his great band with Jason Moran, Reuben Rogers, and Eric Harland to the Regattabar January 21-22. In the meantime, here are 10 other primo jazz acts to catch live this winter.

Alone together How can a jazz band play no swing rhythms, no grooves, and, really, no songs, and hold 1200 people rapt for an hour and 25 minutes, with virtually no breaks in the music?

Teachers and students Several of this fall's promising jazz performances are clustered around the week of October 18. That marks the 40th-anniversary celebration of the jazz-studies program at New England Conservatory, which, created by Gunther Schuller, established NEC as one of the international twin beacons of jazz education in Boston along with Berklee College of Music.

Lionel Loueke | Mwaliko Benin-born, Paris-and-Berklee-educated guitarist Loueke knows how to cover a lot of ground and make it all sound of a piece.

Sonny, Pat, and all the cats The primo jazz event of the spring will be SONNY ROLLINS 's concert at Symphony Hall on April 18 (bso.org). The great master saxophonist and peerless improviser often hits town in April, and this time it's to kick off his 80th-birthday tour. Whew.

Extremeties You can experience jazz at two different extremes at the Regattabar this month, in visits from the quintets of Dave Holland and Tomasz Stanko.

After the rain with Charles Lloyd The voice — a rolling, unhurried drawl with a laugh in it — is that of Charles Lloyd, 72 years old, saxophonist, early career star, temporary recluse, lifelong mystic seeker.

FRED HERSCH TRIO AT SCULLERS | March 01, 2013 Fred Hersch's output as a composer includes an orchestrated setting of poems from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass as well as other art-song fare for singers.

THIS SPRING'S JAZZ &AMP; WORLD MUSIC SHOWS | February 28, 2013 The saxophonist Chris Potter started drawing attention when he joined the group of legendary bebop trumpeter Red Rodney as an 18-year-old Manhattan School of Music student.